Alasdair Gray - A History Maker

Researchers in Scotland have learned the couple had been known (though only to other gangrels) as far north as Caithness and Sutherland, as far east as Buchan and Fife, as far south as Clydesdale, but had always avoided the Scottish — English borders, a region most travellers like for its fertile commons and hospitable homesteads. This was also the region where Wat and Meg’s affair had become a popular legend of love that had shaken the world. A version of the song recorded near Freuchie, in Fife, has a verse not known in Ireland.

When one broke their neck in a tumble,

(It doesnae now matter just which)

The tither, with naebody else to detest,

Starved to death in the very same ditch.

All four crude verses are now added to Wat Dryhope’s and Meg Mountbenger’s intelligence archive with a question mark following it. They were probably composed after the couple described got buried in unmarked graves. Nobody can be sure they were the hero and villain of this tale, but such an ending for Kittock’s son and daughter seems as likely as murder and suicide, and more in keeping with modern notions. We prefer the comic to the tragic mode.

Altrieve Cottage,

home of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd,

looking toward Mountbenger

around 1820

Alasdair Gray is a fat old asthmatic Glaswegian who lives by painting and writing. His other books include Lanark, Unlikely Stories Mostly, 1982 Janine, The Fall of Kelvin Walker, Lean Tales (with James Kelman and Agnes Owens), Old Negatives (verse), McGrotty & Ludmilla, Something Leather, Why Scots Should Rule Scotland, Poor Things and The Ends of Our Tethers

First published in Great Britain in 1994 by

Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,

Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

This Canongate edition, originally published in 2005,

has final changes which the author wants reproduced in future editions

This digital edition first published in 2014

by Canongate Books

Copyright © Alasdair Gray, 1994

The moral right of the author has been asserted

The book is dedicated to the late Chris Boyce who suggested nearly all the science and some of the fiction. It is also indebted to Margaret Mead whose Coming of Age in Samoa suggested a kindlier society than her critics thought possible; also to Bruce Charlton for medical advice and Scott Pearson for scholarly research and proof correction

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84767 702 0

www.canongate.tv